Coffee, Cantatas and Bach

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abu ghosh, Andres Mustonen, Barrocade

 

 

A Saturday morning all-Bach concert in the neighbouring village of Abu Ghosh was an occasion not to be missed, especially as it coincided with a special birthday. And what an occasion it was! It marked the conclusion of the Barrocade ensemble’s concert season, featured Finnish violinist and conductor Andres Mustonen, and the programme included Bach’s Cantata no. 140, Brandenburg concerto no. 5 and his concerto for oboe d’amore. A rich programme indeed, and one that ended on a particularly attractive note – a performance of Bach’s Coffee Cantata

 

The history of the spread of coffee in Europe in the seventeenth century is the subject of legend. According to some reports an Ethiopian farmer noted the lively behavior of his goats after they had chewed the berries of a certain bush. From there the coffee drink spread throughout the Arab world, was traded by the Ottomans with Venice, and entered Europe via that route.

 

According to another account, when the invading Ottoman army was routed by the troops of the Holy Roman Empire at the siege of Vienna in 1683, the Turks left large quantities of tents, pack animals, grain and gold as well as sacks filled with green coffee beans. When the booty was distributed it transpired that no one wanted the beans, which were unknown in Vienna at the time. A Polish resident of Vienna by the name of Kolschitsky who had lived in Istanbul and served as an interpreter, offered to take the sacks. He knew how to prepare coffee, and later established the first coffee house in Vienna, from where the institution spread to the rest of Europe.

 

Coffee houses became meeting places and the scene of social gatherings, the forerunner of the men’s club; women were banned from them in England and France, while in Germany they were permitted to enter. In Bach’s time in Leipzig (1723 until his death in 1750) the Zimmerman Café was well known as a meeting place for musicians, it housed the Collegium Musicum, an ensemble that was established there in 1702 by Telemann, and it was there that Bach’s Coffee Cantata was first performed.

 

We all know Bach as a serious, prolific and God-fearing composer, and the cantatas he composed for performance in the framework of the weekly church service are a mainstay of the musical repertoire, not to mention his many other orchestral, chamber and choral compositions.

 

We also know that Bach had a large family, and it would seem that – perhaps inevitably – he also had a sense of humour. At any rate, the Coffee Cantata begins with the narrator telling the audience (in German) to ‘Shut up, and stop chattering,’ which probably reflects what was happening in the coffee house at the time.

 

The two main characters in what is essentially a mini-opera, the father, Schlendrian (literally, ‘Stick in the Mud’) and Lieschen, his daughter, are in disagreement because the father objects to his daughter’s habit of drinking coffee. The two engage in an entertaining musical duel – the father trying every ruse he can think of to stop his daughter drinking coffee and the daughter happily accepting every restriction he seeks to impose in order to be able to continue indulging in the habit. In the performance we attended the singers donned period costume and acted their roles, using props such as coffee cups of various shapes and sizes. However, when the father threatens to prevent his daughter from marrying she finally agrees to stop drinking coffee and urges him to find her a husband, though secretly resolving that whoever he may be he will have to allow her to drink coffee.

 

At this point, much to the audience’s amusement, the father started to point to one or another member of the audience, indicating that they might be a suitable match. But Lieschen has a plan of her own and it turns out that her choice has fallen on the personable young tenor-narrator. The cantata ends with all three singing joyfully about the delights of coffee, a beverage that is enjoyed even by mothers and grandmothers. The message seems to be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them,’ and that is possibly a lesson that Bach himself had to learn in his long and productive life.

 

(In honour of Yigal’s 75^th birthday)

 

 

Handel’s ‘Messiah’

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abu ghosh, Christmas, Festival Hall, Kilburn, Lincoln Nebraska, South Bank, Thames

I’m not quite sure how far back the family tradition goes, but I know that when my father was a child in Hamburg, Germany, he was taken to concerts there, and that music, and especially choral music, played an important part in the family’s life. I, too, was taken to concerts in my childhood in London, primarily to hear a performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah.’

In England, and indeed all over the world, it is customary to perform the oratorio at Christmas time. Going to hear that wonderful oratorio as a child brought me into contact with a world that was very different from the one in which I lived ordinarily. From the modest neighbourhood of Kilburn I was transported to a glittering scene of light and warmth on London’s South Bank, to the Festival Hall, where every brightly-lit window was reflected in the dark waters of the Thames that flowed beside it.

And after the long journey by public transport across London, what a delight it was to find my childhood self surrounded by well-spoken people in elegant clothes, to walk with my father on soft carpets to our appointed places, and to listen to the sublime music that emanated from the huge orchestra and choir, and the lavishly-dressed soloists at the front of the stage. The fact that most of the words were taken from the Old Testament, the words of the Prophet Isaiah and the Psalms, dawned on me only at a much later stage.

Over the years I became very familiar with the oratorio, knowing which aria followed which chorus, and being able to sing them to myself as I fell asleep. The excitement that enveloped the audience as the introduction to the Hallelujah Chorus was played and everyone stood up (only in England, as I later found out), was also part of the theatrical nature of the event.

Since living in Israel I have tried to go to a performance of the Messiah whenever possible, and in recent years it has become an annual event at Christmas-time. It is performed by an Israeli choir, orchestra and soloists in the church at Abu Ghosh, and although the pronunciation of the English words is not always quite as it should be, the notes are definitely the same.

In 1984 we spent a year in Lincoln, Nebraska, and were able to participate in a public performance of the work. To do this one had to buy the book containing the music and words so that one could sing along in the choral parts. The conductor, orchestra, choir and soloists were on the stage, and the audience was invited to join in the choir. An attempt was made to divide us up into sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this did not always work as it should. All the same, everyone had a good time, and did their best to sing along.

Part of the fun in Abu Ghosh is being able to join in the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus by the audience, together with the entire ensemble, once the performance is over. It is a heartwarming moment when the conductor (Ron Zarhi at last week’s performance) turns round and encourages everyone to join in.

One year I even managed to attend a performance in a church in France. There, too, the pronunciation of the English text was occasionally slightly quirky (‘The trompette shall sound,’ for example), but to hear it sung in all its glory, with the additional bonus of a grand, newly-installed organ, was out of this world.

Just as my father took me to performances in my childhood, I have endeavoured to take my children, and later my grandchildren, to hear this splendid work. So it was a particular pleasure last week to be able to take our youngest granddaughter, 12-year-old Lihi, to hear it for the first time. She said she enjoyed it, and sat transfixed throughout the two-hour performance. Many performers and members of the audience subsequent enjoyed lunch at one of the nearby restaurants, adding to the enjoyment of the event.

I don’t believe in cutting oneself off from all the cultural bounty the world has to offer simply because it is associated with a religion that is not one’s own. And I’m happy and proud of the fact that not only my own parents, who were observant Jews, but their parents, too, seem to have shared this enlightened view. And that is part of the heritage I hope to be able to pass on to my own offspring.

Coming home

Tags

abu ghosh, customs officials, family, Israel, rural France, Tel Aviv

From the plane we could see the line marking the bright sands of the Tel-Aviv coast beneath us and knew that we were nearly home. For once we were returning in daylight so that it was not the myriad lights of the city that twinkled to welcome us back. The green-brown-yellow patchwork of fields, houses, buildings several storeys high and flat-roofed village houses all looked serene in the afternoon sunshine. It’s a far cry from the lush, leafy landscape of rural France but it’s home.

Coming back to Israel is a mixture of sounds, sights, scents and emotions. Do passengers anywhere else in the world applaud a pilot’s smooth landing? Even on an Easyjet flight? Do customs officials anywhere else consider it perfectly acceptable to examine your documents, then hand them back to you without saying a word? Do airports anywhere else in the world have large signs welcoming you to their country? Is it perfectly normal to hear people around you speaking in at least four different languages, sometimes in the same conversation?

I think not. Anyway, it’s good to be back on familiar ground after an absence of two months. A short ride home to Mevasseret (with a stop at the famous Caravan restaurant in Abu Ghosh, where we’re greeted like old friends, to scoop up some humus with freshly-baked pitta) and it soon seemed as if we had never been away. Forget courtesy on the road, forget acting as if you have all the time in the world, this is Israel where you take your life in your hands every time you get in a car. But one soon gets used to the different pace of life, and as we drove down our long, narrow street, made even narrower by the cars parked on either side, it felt good to enter the familiar portal of our house and breathe in the familiar scent of jasmine in the garden.

Whenever I ask anyone in Israel how their summer was they reply ‘hot, unbearably hot.’ The temps were in the high 30s for about eight consecutive weeks, and everyone suffered. In France we had about ten days of it, and the radio was constantly broadcasting warnings, saying ‘Attention. Canicule!’ and telling people to drink a lot of water and stay out of the sun. In Israel even though it’s taken for granted that you know that you should drink a lot (not alcohol) and stay out of the sun, the long spell of excessive heat did get quite a lot of media attention.

It’s nice to be able to go to the supermarket and not be confronted by a bewildering array of foods. Not that there isn’t a considerable range of options of all kinds – even cheeses – in our local supermarket, but at least I more or less know what the various names mean. It’s particularly nice, too, to be able to understand every word of the news on the radio, and when it comes to the classical music programme there’s a distinct advantage in having one that contains more music than verbiage. And of course, there are the concerts that await us – the Israel Philharmonic with four Mahler symphonies, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra with a rich and varied programme, etc., etc.

But the main thing about being back in Israel is being reunited with our family and friends. It’s a delight to be together with our children and grandchildren again, even if it means cooking for fifteen people instead of two. It’s great to be able to pick up the phone and speak to siblings and friends and relations whenever the fancy takes one (well, almost). And it’s especially handy to be able to consult one of my sons whenever a computer problem crops up – as it invariably does.

If only we could bring some of France’s cool summer weather to Israel our life here would be perfect.